Facility management is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the process of coordinating business between buildings, people, infrastructure, energy, water, and wastewate
r services aiming to coordinate overlapping services and extend the life of the assets and services involved.
Another definition given by International Facility Management Association (IFMA) is: “The practice or coordination of actual work with people and the work of a facility, which integrates principles of business, architecture, engineering, and behavioral sciences.”
From these two definitions, we can conclude that facilities management coordinates all the operations of the facility to simplify the organization of the facility in more efficient and effective approach. To be clear, your facility is basically your building and everything that consists of it. Facility management makes sure that every object and person within your building works in harmony with each other with the facility manager making sure that this is what actually happens.
Difference between Facility Management and Maintenance Management
- The maintenance department specializes in building maintenance, road maintenance and hygiene maintenance, but utilities specialize in infrastructure, all water, power, and electronics.
- Facilities management is concerned with the process of coordinating operations between buildings, people and infrastructure, nevertheless maintenance management is a part of it.
- Maintenance management of a technical nature and facilities management of a service and administrative nature.
The difference between Facilities Management and Property Management
The term Facility Management is similar to the term Property Management, but they are not the same:
- As both manage the day-to-day operations of the facility, the Property Manager has an extended role that includes leasing and marketing activities, while the Facilities Manager plays a role focused on existing tenants who are usually residents, can be applied in any industrial, services, production, tourism, medical fields and/or other firms.
- An important feature of facilities management is that it takes into account human needs for the use of constructed buildings and facilities, and these soft factors complement the hard factors associated with maintenance and care of engineering service facilities.
- Facilities are managed during the operational phase of the building’s life cycle, which typically spans many decades, and thus represents an ongoing process of providing services to support the owner’s core business, where improvements are required continually.
- It is essential that the decision-making process, in the previous design and construction phases, takes place in a manner appropriate to the operational needs if the facility is to provide optimal support to the organization.
Facility management can be considered an integral part of the design, engineering, construction and operation processes that are conducted in coordination and control. When the facility is provided on a turnkey basis
This is the functional role of Facilities Management to coordinate and oversee the environmentally sound and safe operations and preservation of these assets in an efficient and inexpensive manner aimed at achieving long-term asset value preservation and in cases where the operation of facilities directly involves the occupants and/or customers of the organization.
The satisfactory delivery of related service facilities to these persons is very important and, therefore, the term “customer happiness” is used as a goal and a measure of performance.
Therefore, Prosper Egypt’s facility management strategy has been adopted on:
- Analyze and understand priorities and operational models.
- Defining operational and maintenance capabilities and target maturity level.
- Develop a target operating model.
- Develop an asset life cycle planning and management system for operation and maintenance.
